I’m excited by the possibilities that network programmability offers network operators. Through JUNOS SLAX scripts, Juniper has offered a simple mechanism for programming its routers for many years.
Over the last several months, I’ve been writing primarily ops scripts in SLAX. I want to share my findings on how to simplify a SLAX development environment.
JUISE/libslax – If you want to write SLAX scripts, download the JUNOS User Internet Scripting Environment (juise) for “off-the-box” scripting. juise requires libslax, another open source project by Juniper. The combination allows you to remotely execute ops and commit scripts on JUNOS devices. You don’t have to manually scp/ftp scripts from your server to the routers. libslax contains a SLAX syntax checker called slaxproc. JUISE has a built-in debugger that will make you wonder how you ever gotten anything done in SLAX without it.
refresh command – Another way to avoid manually copying SLAX scripts to routers is the use of the refresh command in JUNOS configuration mode. I use a lightweight web server from google called mongoose to serve files from the directory in which I write the scripts. Any web server will do the trick though.
I set the sources in the config using this syntax.
set system scripts op file script1.slax source http://192.168.100.10:8080/script1.slax set system scripts op file script2.slax source http://192.168.100.10:8080/script2.slax set system scripts op file slax-doctor.slax source http://192.168.100.10:8080/slax-doctor.slax
Now you can execute ‘set system scripts op refresh’ and JUNOS will download the files to /var/db/script/ops. Invoking the command from configuration mode feels very un-JUNOS-like. You’ll be prompted by the CLI when exiting config mode to confirm that you want to exit with uncommitted changes.
slax-doctor – Curtis Call’s slax-doctor SLAX script is invaluable for SLAX scripting. libslax does very limited error checking, leaving most errors undiscovered until runtime. The reporting of errors often does not identify the one unterminated string or other typo that is wreaking havoc on the script. I execute slax-doctor every time that I make non-trivial change. You can download the script here or in the collection of scripts in the junoscriptorium project on github.
op invoke-debugger cli – JUNOS 13.1 introduces official support of the ‘op invoke-debugger cli‘ operational mode command. The command is hidden is some prior versions of JUNOS. I’ve used the on-box debugger very rarely. I prefer using the debugger in juise.
If you develop SLAX scripts and want to share other tips, please include them in the comments section. For other readers who have not delved into SLAX, start reading the This Week: Applying the Junos Automation ebook and get coding today.
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